KATHMANDU — The world of refugeedom tends to be divided between political exiles and economic migrants, even though the dividing line between the two is often blurred. However, there is one other type of refugee that is unique to South Asia, the pilgrim refugee.
This term may best describe the Tibetans who every year continue to brave the Chinese military dragnet along the Himalayan rimland, surmount dangerous High Himalayan passes, and get exploited by rapacious middlemen, as they escape harsh conditions in the high plateau for the spiritual embrace of their Dalai Lama.
According to records at the UNHCR refugee agency in Kathmandu, the flow of Tibetan pilgrim-refugees has averaged 2500 to 3500 annually in recent times. The set procedure is for UNHCR to hold the refugees in a halfway house in Kathmandu before transferring them to Dharamsala. There are many more who are said to head directly to India without bothering to contact the UNHCR. They descend through the middle hills of Nepal and wend their way through the plains of Uttar Pradesh and up to Dharamsala, and the smoothly functioning reception machinery of the Tibetan government-in-exile.
It is not always that easy, however, for the Nepali Government has blown hot and cold on this continuing flow of Tibetans. Nepal´s geopolitical compulsions—that of the need to balance India´s overwhelming presence with good relations with Beijing— has made Kathmandu succumb to Chinese whims on the matter.